IT'S ALWAYS SOMETHING

2 Samuel 18:1-19:10; John 20:1-31; Psalm 119:153-176; Proverbs 16:14-15

“We saved your life today and the lives of your sons, your daughters, and your wives and concubines. Yet you act like this, making us feel ashamed of ourselves. You seem to love those who hate you and hate those who love you…. Now go out there and congratulate your troops, for I swear by the Lord that if you don’t go out, not a single one of them will remain here tonight. Then you will be worse off than ever before.”

“One of the twelve disciples, Thomas (nicknamed the Twin), was not with the others when Jesus came. They told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’  But he replied, ‘I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.’”

 Gilda Radner’s old Saturday Night Live character, Roseanne Roseannadanna, had an oft-quoted tag line, “It’s always something!” That sentiment might just qualify as the theme of our generation. Contentment, if it exists at all, is seldom better than situational and rarely lasts longer that our ability to recognize the next thing we don’t have that we want. Surgeons transplant vital organs; we complain about how the sedative makes us feel. The boss lets us keep our job; we complain there is no raise. Someone does us a favor; we are disappointed when it is not done better. We are a fickle bunch. No one but God could have been patient with us for so long. Yet the sounds of our whining continue to drown out His encouragement and love.

Now, don’t get ahead of me. Scripture is right; there is a time and place for everything. David had every right – and a legitimate need - to grieve Absalom. But not in a way that basically slapped his benefactors in the face for their efforts to save him. Thomas had every right to be disappointed that he’d missed Jesus’ first appearance to the disciples as a group. But not to the extent of demanding a closer encounter with Jesus than they had experienced. (That Jesus honored his request anyway says much more about grace than about Thomas’ prideful, “I’ll be the toughest nut to crack in the bunch” attitude.) As hard as it may be to accept from the center of the storm, when our grief, selfishness or discontent, however understandably, develops to the point that we cannot be considerate of others, it has gone too far. It is a clear sign we are not letting Jesus minister to us, or heal and make us whole. When our insatiable desire for more is motivated by a desire to set ourselves apart from others (whether on the “positive” side, with success and riches; or the “negative” side, with excuses and the sympathy vote), it is well past time we start thinking about giving our lives back to Christ. Only He can fill the empty void in our hearts and souls. Only He is all-sufficient. We really need to accept that He is all-sufficient, and that what we don’t have, we may not really need.

All this also raises the question of what David was actually grieving. Was it truly his son’s death, or the fact that David’s insensitive banishment of his son started the alienation in the first place. Was it honest grief, or guilt? Or was he losing faith in the midst of the trial? Joab thought he knew. David’s silence in the face of his rebuke looks a lot like confirmation. David may have been feeling sorry for himself. But whatever the cause of his anguish, Joab forced him to live out of faith, whether he liked it or not. Joab made him reengage with life, with his troops, and show a gratitude he did not feel. Joab’s words read like they are heartless. But as David lived them, in spite of himself, he was renewed by the Holy Spirit, and the entire Hebrew Kingdom was reunited under his rule.

Tough love has its time and place, too. Some might argue Joab had no compassion. I would counter that he had great compassion, and empathy. This passage is way too complex and brief to allow a serious discussion of which man was “right” at what time. But the point is, even in his deepest despair, David did not have to be overcome by his grief. He could, and did, break out of it. He did it by focusing on others with a grateful heart. Let’s work on living out of wholeness, not discontent or guilt. We might just hear the Father actually calling out to us a little more often in the bargain.